


Think of the Body's Loneliness

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: twd_kinkmeme, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written to fill a prompt on twd_kinkmeme: How Carol survived in the prison for days, alone and lost, surrounded by walkers with nothing but a knife.</p>
<p>
  <i>She prays. Not to any god, though she cannot abandon the faith of her youth. Still, God did not save her from the beatings and the rapes. God did not save the world from the dead. God did not save Sophia. God will not save her now.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She prays to her loved ones.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Think of the Body's Loneliness

She gets turned around almost immediately. The prison is dark and uniform – each section looks like the last and each is full of shambling dead bodies. Once she loses her knife in the neck of a bloated walker, she knows she can’t last much longer.

The utility closet seems like a blessing. Walkers can’t open doors. They can only walk. If they could open doors, people’d call’em something different - Openers, maybe. She holds her hands over her mouth to keep back the hysterical laughter that bubbles in the back of her throat. Just because they can’t open doors doesn’t mean she’s safe.

She listens for hours the muted groans and sandpaper rasp of walkers shuffling aimlessly back and forth down the hallway. She tries not to think of all their dead: Sophia; T-Dog; Amy; Jim, Jacqui; Dale; Shane. But there is nothing else she can think about. She wonders if this is how they felt before they died. 

She keeps up a running conversation in her own head – a silent pep talk. You’ll make it, she tells herself. Daryl. Rick. Someone will find you. 

She wonders if this is what the others thought before they died. 

The noises never let up. There is never a break in the ceaseless moaning and shuffling and she thinks, not for the first time, how very very tiring it must be to be a Walker. She can remember her Mama telling her years ago when her Gramma passed on that death is an eternal rest. 

_“She was tired,” Mama said softly. “Now she can rest forever in Heaven.”_

Not true, Mama, Carol thinks. No rest for the dead now

She closes her eyes against the noise. It doesn’t turn off her ears, but she does it all the same. It’s dark in the recess of the closet and she tries, unsuccessfully, to sleep.

At this point, if a Walker makes it through those doors, being awake will not significantly improve her chances for survival. 

Sophia walks across the backs of her eyelids, first living, then dead. Living. Then dead.

She replays her worst fears: that this is what Sophia suffered – alone in the dark and so very scared of the noises coming from just outside. She cannot stop thinking if Sophia called for her, called for her Mama who would not, could not, save her.

She prays. Not to any god, though she cannot abandon the faith of her youth. Still, God did not save her from the beatings and the rapes. God did not save the world from the dead. God did not save Sophia. God will not save her now.

She prays to her loved ones.

She prays to Dale and Jacqui and Jim and Sophia and Shane and T-Dog and Amy and even Ed. She prays without words. She prays from every part of her heart. She prays they can hear her.

She loves them and she misses them but she does not want to join them.

The noises begin to blend together. The susurrus of shuffling and scraping, moaning and gurgling rush over and around her, reminding her of music. She misses music.

She thinks of all the long gone songs she used to sing. She remembers Sophia, her little sunshine, and all the nights of rocking and singing. The times at church and the little hums around the holidays. The song her sister used to be play when they drove somewhere, her lips pursed tight to keep all her angry words at bay.

_Light the sky and hold on tight/The world is burning down_

She thinks maybe she will die here, after all. Her lips are cracked and her mouth is dry. She thinks it’s been a day, maybe two. It won’t be Walkers. It won’t be blood and pain, but she’ll spend eternity shuffling nonetheless.

She can hear new noises. She knows those noises. It’s a rasp, a catch at the back of his throat. She knows those noises because they are her noises, too. It’s how you cry without crying. It’s how you cry when crying will make the beatings worse but the pain needs a way to escape somehow.

She rocks weakly towards the door. 

She prays with no words. She prays from every part of her heart. She prays he can hear her.


End file.
